September 27, 2009

PDC 08 – Recap

So, PDC09 is not far away. But, sadly, I’m not going to make it this time.

I had thought for a longer time about posting some pictures from PDC08 as kind of a retrospective – but you know how it is, other things coming up, not much time, well.

And then this nut showed up, hijacked my blog and posted this nonsense about some crime that should have happened last PDC? Come on! Here’s the list of what I can only call a real good example of real dumb accusations:

Let me stress that again: There is no proof whatsoever to this story! As I see it, all these accusations are groundless, all people addressed are innocent victims. So, please, do not accuse anyone of installing LINUX on somebody’s machine if you don’t have proof. Much less on the grounds of this story! ;-)

All that remains for me is some complementary pictures:

Windows Azure was THE big announcement at PDC08, and it’s going to be one of the major topic for PDC09. Microsoft really has something here that might change a lot in the long run. If they remove the two road blockers, that is: One, they need to make this infrastructure available for enterprise customers to lower the barrier to entry. Two, they need to do what they always did: attract developers and create a prosperous community of enthusiasts around Azure. To achieve that, they need to offer the platform for free. All with reasonable constraints of course. And this is just my opinion.

Oslo, and M, was another major topic. But I can’t help thinking that this was mainly because it was the “Don Box-Topic”. It’s been relatively quiet around it since then, and unfortunately this also includes the somewhat related “Dublin”, which I think is a very important step in the services area.

Hands-On-Labs was as always the best way to lay your hands on the stuff you heard about for the first time just this very morning. If you had the time.

Talking about the location, the first and the last thing you saw about PDC was L.A. …

the Convention Center…

… and if you didn’t use the shuttle system, it was probably Pico Station, featuring a great view at Downtown.

However, I have been attending 3 PDCs so far, all of them in L.A. I’d really like to see some other city next time? (Microsoft, I could give you a list of areas in the U.S., I haven’t visited so far ;-) ).